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By Pierre-Henry DESHAYES Agence France-Presse FETSUND, Norway (AFP) — One at a time, the elderly lady places her empties into the gaping hole of a machine at the entrance to an Oslo supermarket. With a well-functioning deposit system, Norway recycles almost all of its plastic bottles. “You have to get rid of them, so you may as well do it intelligently,” says the woman in her 70s, as the machine spits out a bar-code ticket that […]
By Marc BURLEIGH Agence France-Presse STRASBOURG, France (AFP) — European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen pleaded Wednesday to save her signature “green deal” in the longterm EU budget that has been left short by Brexit. “If we do not set aside the funds… we will simply fail to achieve a climate neutral Europe” by 2050 as planned, she told the European Parliament. Her warning was laid down a week before an extraordinary EU summit in […]
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Germany (AFP) — German high-end carmaker BMW aims to slash the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by its cars sold in Europe this year by 20 percent, its chief executive said Wednesday. The pledge comes as new European Union regulations bite this year, requiring carmakers to sharply reduce fleet-wide emissions on pain of massive fines. “We will achieve an improvement of 20 percent in Europe this year alone” compared with 2019, CEO […]
by Marlowe HOOD PARIS, France (AFP) — The global cost of air pollution caused by fossil fuels is $8 billion a day, or roughly 3.3 percent of the entire world’s economic output, an environmental research group said on Wednesday. The report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Greenpeace Southeast Asia is the first to assess the global cost of air pollution specifically from burning oil, gas and coal. “We […]
by Jean-Baptiste OUBRIER LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Energy firm BP’s pledge on Wednesday to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050 is among the most ambitious in an industry often criticized for its inaction over climate change. Here are the commitments made so far by the world’s major oil companies: BP The British company says it is aiming to be a net zero company in its global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner. […]
by Francois Becker and Antoine Bouthier Agence France-Presse MONTCLAR, France (AFP) – Last Christmas, for the first time in its existence, a ski resort in the French Alpine town of Montclar could count neither on Mother Nature nor its artificial snow machines to produce enough of the white stuff to cover its pistes. Instead, it had to use a helicopter, at great cost, to bring snow from the high peaks of the Alps to lower, warmer […]
by Patrick GALEY Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Global energy-related CO2 emissions “flattened” in 2019 following two years of increases owing to greater use of renewables and an accelerating shift from coal to gas, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. Electricity generation produced around 33 billion tonnes of CO2 last year, defying forecasts that emissions from power would continue their upward trend. The IEA said that emissions from coal — the most polluting fossil […]
By Jitendra JOSHI Agence France-Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Away from the toxic atmosphere at climate summit talks, in boardrooms, banks and trading houses, a transformation in green finance is under way. Its backers hope it could profitably help save the planet. Regardless of the politics of climate change, there is real money to be made today in the exploding market for bonds and other instruments invested in environmentally sustainable projects. But in the final […]
by Marlowe HOOD PARIS, France (AFP) — Climate change has contributed to a sharp drop in bumblebee populations across North America and Europe in recent decades, scientists said Friday. Compared to the period 1900-1974, bumblebee numbers across dozens of distinct species dropped, on average, 46 percent during the first 15 years of the 21st century in Canada and the United States. In Europe, the corresponding decline of the pollinators was 17 percent, they reported in […]
UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — The UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs called on the international community Monday to help East African countries affected by locust swarms, expressing his deep concern over the situation. “There are 13 million people in the affected countries who are severely food insecure now,” said Mark Lowcock during a UN press conference. “Ten million of those people are in the places affected by locusts.” Lowcock, who said he had recently […]
KAMPALA, Uganda (AFP) — A locust infestation sweeping the Horn of Africa reached Uganda on Sunday, a government minister said as the prime minister convened an emergency meeting to address the pest invasion. “The locusts entered Uganda today” from Kenya, said Moses Kizige, the minister in charge of the northeastern Karamoja border region where the insects were spotted. The locusts have devastated food supplies in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, with the Food and Agriculture Organization […]
by Abdulkarim AL-MARANI with Dana MOUKHALLATI in Dubai Agence France Presse Sanaa, Yemen (AFP) — Yemen’s war makes life a daily struggle for millions of civilians, but creatures in the country’s neglected zoos, including lions, leopards and baboons also face an uncertain future. At the country’s main zoo in Sanaa, the capital seized in 2014 by the Iran-backed Huthi militias who control much of the north, a man unloaded one of a dozen dead donkeys […]
